Fibonacci Scarf

I'm not sure this exactly belongs on this blog, but my son wanted me to post it somewhere and it fits better here than anywhere else ...

Last year (2014) for Christmas I sent my husband and the kids to the craft store and told them each to pick a skein of yarn for me to knit a scarf with.  I hadn't knit in a long time.  When my oldest was about 4 and my second was about 2, they discovered that knitting needles made great swords, and they tended to take the 'swords' out of whatever I was knitting and it just didn't really work well.  But now, I thought, the older one knew better and the youngest (then 2) was not as interested in sword play as her brothers had been.

And knit I did.  I made three scarves for the three youngest, and by then I was getting a bit bored with extremely simple designs that I could knit almost in my sleep.

So for my oldest, I made a Fibonacci scarf.

I cast on 21 stitches.

I expressed the sequence in three different ways:

Fibonacci #1

1: knit 1 row
1: knit 1 row
2: knit 2 rows
3: knit 3 rows
5: knit 5 rows
8: P2, K17, P2; K2, P17, K2; P2, K17, P2; P21; P2, K17, P2; P21; K21; K2, P17, K2.
13: K2, P17, K2; P2, K17, P2; K2, P17, K2; K21; K2, P17, K2; K21; P21; P2, K17, P2; P21; K21; P21; K21; K2, P17, K2.
21: P2, K17, P2; K2, P17, K2; P2, K17, P2; P21; P2, K17, P2; P21; K21; K2, P17, K2; K21; P21; K21; P21; P2, K17, P2; K21; P21; K21; P21; K21; P21;  K21; P2, K17, P2.

Fibonacci #2

0: K21

1: K1 p201: K1 p202: K2 p193: K3 p185: K5 p168: K8 p1313: K13 k821: K21


Fibonacci #3

K1 p1 k2 p3 k5 p8 k1
P12 k9
P12 k1 p1 k2 p3 k2
P3 k8 p10
K3 p18
K3 p1 k1 p2 k3 p5 k6
P2 k13 p6
K15 p1 k1 p2 k2
P1 k5 p8 k7
P6 k15
P6 k1 p1 k2 p3 k5 p3
K5 p13 k3
P18 k1 p1 k1
P1 k3 p5 k8 p4
K9 p12
K9 p1 k1 p2 k3 p5
K8 p13
K21

This shows all three sequences in order (or almost all three):

I was able to do almost 4 repeats of all three sequences with one ball of Sugar-n-Cream Hot Green yarn on size 6 needles.  Frustrating not to be able to finish the last 8 rows or so!

But he didn't care.  Here he is modeling (along with siblings modeling theirs) on New Year's Eve, when I finally finished it:

The Girl Who Broke Her Pot

This is a story from the Tsonga people, who have lived in the lands which we now call the countries of South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, for more than a thousand years.

That’s on the south east coast of the African continent.  It’s a tropical climate, with a dry season and a rainy season. 

Now once upon a time in the dry season, there was a village that was very far from the waterhole, where they went to get water for drinking, cooking, and washing.

One day, a girl was going from that village to draw water from the waterhole, when the rope holding her water pot broke, the pot fell to the ground, and broke into many pieces.

This was a terrible problem.  “Oh, no!  I must find a new pot,” she cried.  She looked up.  And there, hanging from a cloud, was a rope.  She took hold of it, and pulled on it, but it didn’t fall into her hand, it hung there as if attached to something strong.

Since she didn’t know what else to do, she climbed up the rope.  And in the sky, she found a ruined village.  An old woman was sitting there, and asked what she wanted.

The girl told her story, and the old woman told her to keep walking in this sky land, and if an ant crawled up into her ear she must leave it alone, as the ant would tell her what to do.

 

She wasn’t sure how this was supposed to get her a pot, but she didn’t have any better ideas, so she kept walking.  And pretty soon, an ant did crawl into her ear. The girl kept walking, and came to another village, where she heard the ant whisper to her to sit down at the entrance.

If she had come this far, she might as well do as she was directed and see what happened.  So she sat down at the gate.  Some Elders came out in shining clothes and asked what she was doing there. 

Well, she thought it would look silly to these shiny, important people if she told them she wanted a new pot, even though it WAS important to her.  Thinking quickly, the girl said she had come to look for a baby.  That SOUNDED serious and important.

When they heard this, the elders took her to a house, gave her a basket, and told her to collect some corn from the garden. The ant whispered that she should pull one cob at a time, and arrange it carefully in the basket. So she did. 

The elders were pleased with her work, and told her to cook the corn.  So she did, following the ant's instructions.  Again, the elders were happy.

The next morning they showed her two babies, one wrapped in red cloth and one in white cloth. She was going to choose the one in the red clothes, when the ant told her to choose the one wrapped in white instead. 

The elders gave her the baby, and as many cloths and beads as she could carry.  It wasn’t a new pot, but it was something better.  Her family welcomed her home with joy and greeted the new baby with delight. 

Bad fortune broke her rope and her pot, but because she looked around for a solution (seeing the rope), was polite (to the old woman), willing to follow directions (from the ant), and willing to do what was asked of her (by the elders),  good fortune brought her something better. 

I adapted this story from this source: http://www.gateway-africa.com/stories/The_Girl_Who_Broke_Her_Pot_Ronga.html and I'm happy to have it used for any non-profit purpose.